Search Results for: label/soil

213 results

Hops in Southern California

Mr. Homegrown
Beer, Gardening, Herbs, Hops
9 Comments
...nt ended in the spring of last year after we accidentally plopped some home built scaffolding on top of the tiny vine while undertaking the heinous task of scraping and painting the front of the house. Planting it in terrible soil doomed it to failure anyways. We’re experimenting with growing both Cascade and Nugget hops in a big self irrigating planter with the hope that we can transfer them to the ground next year or the year after. In th...

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City Farm Chicago

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
4 Comments
...a is to take advantage of some vacant land and, when the inevitable development comes, pull up everything and move on. Assuming that urban land is contaminated, the City Farm folks simply piled up about three feet of compost, soil and mulch right on top of the broken concrete and asphalt of its current location. All that soil will move when the yuppie condos replace the salad greens and radishes. City Farm is an idea that makes sense in big U.S....

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Bulk Bin Microgreens

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
17 Comments
...convince us otherwise, but I’ll warn you that numerous good-hearted attempts have already failed. But we’re both open to the microgreen idea. Microgreens are allowed to grow longer than sprouts and require either soil or some kind of fertilized growing medium. Usually you harvest when the first true set of leaves appear. While we’ve never intentionally grown microgreens we’ve always thinned seedlings by eating them. And...

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Advances in Gardening Series: A Garlic Mystery

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
16 Comments
...ntial rains and cold interspersed with heat waves. Our best guess is that this irregularity created conditions ripe for various sorts of molds and bacteria which garlic does not get along with. Another possibility is that the soil in this bed, which was transferred from another bed, may have pre-existing problems. C’est la vie, as we say around the compost heap. We’ll be buying garlic this year.  We may send the soil in this bed off...

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Humanure Happens

Mr. Homegrown
Humanure
7 Comments
Simparch’s dry toilet located in Wendover Utah From the 1806 edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, “Four loads of earth mixed with one load of privy soil, will be equal to five loads of barnyard dung. Let it lie for several months and occasionally turn it over with a shovel, and it will be of use as manure.” The editors of the Old Farmer’s Almanac 2010, where I found that quote, deemed it necessary to tack on a dis...

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Resources

...his is our favorite composting book–no matter what material we’re composting.) Humanure Handbook in free pdfs Rodale Book of Composting Worms Eat My Garbage Culture and Horticulture Teaming with Microbes NRCS Soil Biology Primer by Elaine Ingham DIY Solar Build it Solar Solar Cooking Archive Earthen Construction/Adobe/Cob Kurt Gardella–our adobe teacher Build Your Own Earth Oven by Kiko Denzer The Cob Cottage Compan...

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Animal Tracking

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Preparedness, Resources
8 Comments
...what kind of critter is digging holes in my beds?” or “Who is eating my cilantro down to nubs?” With my new knowledge set, I can answer these questions by setting up a track trap. A track trap is an area of soil smoothed flat to capture animal tracks. In this class we used two methods: one was to drag a big, flat sack full of dirt (for weight) across stretches of open ground to smooth and compress the soil. When made in the eve...

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Other People’s Poo: Biosolids in the Garden

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Thoughtstylings
18 Comments
It’s people! Why not use city compost in your garden? Ecological designer Darren Butler, at a class I was sitting in on, showed a soil report from a site that had used compost from the city of Los Angeles. LA’s compost contain biosolids, a euphemism for sewage. The soil test showed high levels of: zinc 196 ppm copper 76 ppm sulfur 5,752 ppm The problem isn’t human waste, it’s all the other stuff that ends up...

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Rain- The Best Gift of All

Homegrown Neighbor
rainwater harvesting
14 Comments
...takes. But I do get to harvest a decent amount of water and it feels very satisfying to see that barrel full after only a light rain. So due to the mosquito issue, I use my harvested rain water as soon as possible. Once the soil has dried out, usually just a couple of days later, I attach a hose to the barrel and let it drain. I will set it in the garden and move it around to a few different spots. I have five 55 gallon barrels set up so far. R...

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One Craptacular Week

Mr. Homegrown
Events
18 Comments
It’s been one hell of a week. First we find out, via a soil test, that our backyard may have high levels of lead and zinc. We’ll write a lot more about this once I confirm the results–I’ve sent in another sample to a different lab. And my doctor has agreed to give me a blood test. Whatever the results, I want to help get out the word about this serious issue–ironically, next week is National Lead Poisoning Preve...

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